“There’s three ways to give them the good stuff. First, to capture their attention, give them the thing to remember, and then explain how you got there, rather than what we ran. And the way that I frame it with people is give them dessert first.” – Andrew Monaghan in today’s Tip 1451
How do you capture your prospect’s attention?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Andrew Monaghan. Andrew is the CEO and Founder of Unstoppable.do and host of the Sales Bluebird podcast. He has 18 years of enterprise software sales experience both as a seller and a leader and 8 years as a consultant helping sales teams at software companies sell more, faster. Here he is:
Andrew Monaghan: Over time, I’ve realized that too often we treat a sales call or a sales meeting with a prospect, like a meal at a fine dining restaurant. You know how it is, right? The meal starts slowly. Perhaps we have a drink and then we get some appetizers and maybe some soup. There might be a palate cleanser in there. If it’s a super high-end restaurant. The main course shows up with much fanfare. It looks incredible and tastes good as well. And then finally we have the dessert with its decadence and it’s sugary goodness and the thing that you remember at the end that makes you feel so buzzed and feels so good. But of course, we only have the dessert if we actually have some room for it towards the end.
I love desserts, right? But I understand that there’s a process to go through and for a meal, it actually makes sense to leave the best to last, leave that sugary dessert to last. If we had it first, our taste buds just wouldn’t like what comes after. It would seem so weird and our palate would be messed up in a way to not appreciate the main course. But in a sales conversation, leaving dessert to last makes no sense whatsoever. Too often what we do is we lead our prospects towards some amazing realization, our secret sauce, the most powerful aspect of our product or solution where we have. We lead them towards the outcomes others have achieved with what we have to offer. And if they’re asking us a question, we leave the answer to the question as well till later on. And the trouble is, when we do it this way, we lose our prospects along the process. Their attention spans are just not long enough to wait for us to go through our process to get to the best bit, get to the bit that’s really going to have the impact. Sometimes we don’t even leave enough time at the end of the discussion to do the best bit and give it the importance it deserves.
During a sales call, they can’t wait for the answer to their question, right? They’re really expecting an answer right there and then they’re looking for the ‘Wow’ moment in the demo that they can grasp onto or the most interesting part of the deck. So the answer is, of course, don’t make them wait, right? Instead of doing that, start with the biggest thing that you want to get across. If it’s in the presentation, if it’s a part of a demo, whatever it might be. Start with that biggest thing first. Give them the high-impact point you’re trying to make and then explain how you delivered that or how you got there, or what you have is unique that allows that to be given.
So let’s give some examples.
So do say something like john Smith, the CIO at XYZ Inc. reduced his remediation time by 95%. Let me now show you exactly how we did that. The alternative to that is you explain a whole bunch of things over five to ten minutes, and then you say, well, we got one customer, and what they did was save 95%. They might not have got that far and stuck with you in the process, but if you hit them first with the dessert, which is the big impact that John Smith, someone just like them, had at a company, then you captured their attention better than if you left it at the end.
Another example might be, do say, whereas every other solution tries to solve this one problem this other way, we think that other way is flawed, so we’ve solved it this new way, which is really special and unique. Let me show you how we do that. The alternative that is, show them a bunch of things and then just say at the end of it, oh, by the way, that’s unique, right? You’ve lost the power, you’ve lost their attention at that point. And finally, if they ask you a question, the temptation always is to say, well, let me ask you why you asked me the question. The good hygiene is to ask the clarification questions, right? Which is not bad. I’m not saying that’s bad, but here’s something to put in the middle. So if they ask you the question, you say, well, that’s a good question. I think you’re going to like my answer. But can you quickly just tell me why is that question top of mind for you right now? So what you’ve done there is you told them, I think you’re going to like what I’m going to say. I think you’re going to like my answer to the question. But first of all, let me just understand what’s behind the question that you asked me.
So there’s three ways to give them the good stuff. First, to capture their attention, give them the thing to remember, and then explain how you got there, rather than what we ran. And the way that I frame it with people is give them dessert first.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Andrew, to his podcast and newsletter, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1451. Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!